devil's food
2
3.9
- noun
- /ˈdɛvəlz fʊd/
- US
:
pastel del diablo
- For her celebration, she baked a delicious devil's food cake covered in rich chocolate frosting.
- devil's food cake
- devil's food cake mix
Examples
-
Johnny cake and devil's food and sassafras tea
-
Angel's food or devil's food?
-
First, I made Devil's Food Cake.
Blog text (27) -
Duncan Hines' devil's food. Real good.
Fiction book (1997) -
Shane came back with a carton of devil's food cupcakes.
Fiction book (1996) -
Entenmann's Marshmallow Iced Devil's Food Cake.
Blog text (18) -
The restaurant's dessert menu featured a moist slice of devil's food cake paired with vanilla ice cream.
-
He indulged in a decadent piece of devil's food cake that was both rich and satisfyingly sweet.
Synonyms
850
1.0
A sweet baked food made from flour, sugar, eggs, and fat
41
1.0
A cake made with chocolate and served as a dessert
1
3.2
A very dark, rich chocolate cake that is moist and has a strong chocolate taste
How Rich
Surface Forms
Morphology
devil's + food
The word 'food' clearly signals an edible item and 'devil's' functions as a metaphorical intensifier suggesting something rich, indulgent, or 'sinfully' good, so a B1 learner could infer it's a decadent kind of food. However, the specific sense 'a rich, very dark chocolate cake' is conventionalized and not directly derivable from the constituents, so the expression is only partially predictable.
Etymology
The name devil's food may come from an old bakery idea: the word devil was used to suggest something very dark and rich, the opposite of the light 'angel food' cake, so devil's food came to mean 'a very dark, rich chocolate cake'.